BY OMER KAZMI

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by the story of the Sleepers of Ephesus found in the Quran in chapter 18, verses 9 through 27. 

It is dark where they are
The lazy stares
Would scare
Anyone away, but
They still have a guard. 

At the yawning mouth
The sun misses them
Rising from the right
And setting in the left
For years

We’re supposed to ask
But what questions?
There is so much
That is irrelevant
(How many were they?)
(How long were they gone?)
(What color was their dog?)

I wonder
How they got there.
What brought them
Together
At that point. 

How did they leave 

The comfort

Of conformity?


I wonder
About their example.
When should we choose
To just sleep it off?
When
Is doing nothing
The best thing?

But meaning is there
That we must find
Before we get lost.
They are the past
We need for the future.

When the test gets too hard
When things are not what they seem
We need to stop.
We need to retreat.
We need to go to sleep. 

There is so much we can get wrong.
We can focus on the
Rip van Winkle miracle
Of it by building monuments
And places of worship
And miss the point. 

The idea is what
Matters
Unity binds us together
As it bound them

And maybe
Just maybe
If we are guided
And we get it right
We can wake up
And see
The world had changed.